(RNS) — It is an almost predictable rite of passage in American Jewish life.

I am talking about how so many Jewish kids spend time in Israel when they are teenagers or college students. They go on youth movement trips, study abroad programs, gap-year experiences. Some do various kinds of volunteer work. They come home sunburned, thoughtful and changed. 

It is an unremarkable story. And it is precisely what young Josh Shapiro did. 

Josh would grow up to become Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania. He is an appropriately ambitious politician — so much so, that he came within inches of becoming Kamala Harris’ running mate. 

And then, there was the vetting process — as Shapiro has revealed in his new memoir, “Where We Keep the Light.” Members of the campaign team asked Gov. Shapiro whether he had ever been a “double agent for Israel.” When he responded with disbelief, the question escalated. Dana Remus asked him: Had he ever communicated with an undercover agent for Israel?

To which Shapiro responded: “If they were undercover, how the hell would I know?”

Yes, apparently, Tim Waltz also endured a similar line of questioning. Aides had reviewed his numerous trips to China. 

It is hardly the same. Tim Waltz’s visits to China were about what he did. 

But, with Josh Shapiro? Campaign operatives treated a Jewish American governor’s youthful volunteer work in Israel as grounds for suspicion. It was not because of what he did. It was because of what he is — a Jew with a connection to Israel. It was about the very core of his identity.

It is called dual loyalty, and for Jews, it is the oldest antisemitic charge in the book. Literally — in the book, as in the Bible, as in the first chapter of Exodus. The Israelites have grown numerous in Egypt.

A new Pharaoh looks at them and panics. “Let us deal shrewdly with them,” he says, “lest they increase, and in the event of war, they join our enemies.” The crime is all within the mind and imagination of Pharaoh.

From the very beginning of Jewish history, the powerful have punished Jews not for what they did, but for what they feared Jews might do — and for what they are. 

Fast-forward — to 19th-century France. The French government accused Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer, of espionage. Officials manufactured evidence. Crowds shouted, “Death to the Jews.” Beneath it all lay a single, corrosive belief: that Jews could never truly be French — that no matter how loyal, decorated or assimilated, they would always remain suspect. France condemned Dreyfus not for what he had done, but for who he was.

Then, fast-forward to the 1940s. The American Council for Judaism, a group of anti-Zionist Reform rabbis and lay leaders, internalized that antisemitic theme. They based their opposition to Zionism — yes, on their contention that Judaism was merely a religion, and not a nationality, but also because they were afraid of accusations of dual loyalty. 

That question to Shapiro about his Israel-related activities did not come from a mob. A sane, rational professional raised the question — quietly and bureaucratically — under the banner of “vetting.” That quietness makes it so dangerous. Because the implication is devastating. It takes us back to an earlier time. If you are a Jew, then you can be part of the general culture only if you shed those nasty Jewish traits — like religious observance and feeling connected to another land. Jewish belonging remains conditional.

In the book, Shapiro recounts how the Harris team also asked if he would apologize for comments criticizing antisemitism at anti-Israel protests on university campuses that had erupted that year due to the war in Gaza. He refused to do so.

Shapiro’s memoir, releasing Jan. 27, is about keeping the light, and it opens with the light of a most unwelcome fire. On the first night of Passover, an arsonist attacked the governor’s residence in Harrisburg while Shapiro and his family slept inside. Investigators quickly treated the fire as a politically motivated assault that could easily have killed them.

That fire reemerged recently — this time, as the fire that devoured Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, Mississippi.

Here is the irony: People might distrust, dismiss or disdain Zionism but, every time they express their hatred, they only prove the necessity of the ideology they despise. The Dreyfus affair imprinted itself onto the soul of Theodor Herzl. He realized Jews could not echo Blanche DuBois and “rely on the kindness of strangers.” From Egypt to France to countless other lands, societies welcomed Jews — until they didn’t. They tolerated Jews — until they turned on them.

This is how Justice Louis D. Brandeis put it, in 1915:

Let no American imagine that Zionism is inconsistent with patriotism. Multiple loyalties are objectionable only if they are inconsistent. … Every Irish American who contributed toward advancing home rule was a better man and a better American for the sacrifice he made. Every American Jew who aids in advancing the Jewish settlement in Palestine, though he feels that neither he nor his descendants will ever live there, will likewise be a better man and a better American for doing so.

We should not have to say this, but American Jews are profoundly American. We rank among the most civically engaged communities in the country. The charge of dual loyalty is not only a lie, it is an insult to America itself. A pluralistic society must do more than celebrate diversity. It must learn to recognize ancient prejudices when they reappear in modern language. It must ensure that no citizen ever has to choose between identity and belonging.

Ultimately, that is what Josh Shapiro did. That encounter was so uncomfortable that he chose to withdraw his name from consideration.

Gov. Shapiro was willing to say “no.” No, I will not sacrifice who I am and what I stand for in order to sit with the cool kids.

Shapiro’s memoir is about where we keep the light. I would like to believe that light is the light of Jewish conscience and pride. 

Josh Shapiro saw that light, and he kept it. May we all follow in his footsteps.